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Writer's pictureLaurence Claussen

Political Narrative and Personal Decency: How to Confront our Confederate Past

Adapted from a paper I wrote during Grad School.


In May 2017, the then mayor of New Orleans, Mitch Landrieu, gave a speech that made him an overnight political sensation. Landrieu had recently decided to take down the last significant Confederate monument in the city, a bronze statue of General Robert E. Lee that stood atop an imposing stone pillar. The decision was both contested and controversial. Protests on both sides had raged around the monument for weeks. This incident was also set within a broader context of divisive and often incendiary debate on what to do with the relics of America’s Confederate past.


The speech was a masterful display of how and when to use political narrative. Landrieu refrained from mentioning party, or ideology, but instead chose to weave an argument that recognized the totality of New Orleans’ diverse history. He emphasized that arguments in favor of preserving Confederate symbolism were committed to a narrow understanding of what the city was and who it belonged to. He encouraged everyone listening to take the perspective of a black girl who had to walk by the statue every day on her way to school: “Can you look into that young girl’s eyes and convince her that Robert E. Lee is there to encourage her? Do you think she will feel inspired – and hopeful – by that story?” All this was prefaced and framed not by a moral righteousness, but by deep humility; Landrieu admitted he used to defend the Lee statue, that he had failed to see how the distant past affected people in the present, and that he relied on a close friend to explain what the monument meant for African-Americans.


In these ways Landrieu did not create a political narrative, but he refocused attention on one that was consistently drowned out in the polarized arena of competing national myths. Indeed, he does this explicitly, claiming: “I want to try to gently peel from your hands the grip on a false narrative of our history that I think weakens us.” Landrieu’s was a narrative of understanding and forgiveness. As Frank Bruni put it, “although outrage is the order of the day, his speech trafficked in empathy.” But it was also conscious of its difficult context and committed to action. It was not satisfied with laying out clashing narratives, but it understood that in these circumstances it was crucial to identify which we ought to embrace. In short, here was a statesman with the practical wisdom to both grasp the social power of narrative, and utilize it in positive, reconciliatory ways.


I take compromise in this question to be the decision-moment accompanying political storytelling; where are you going to draw the line? Accordingly, this speech also represented a choice. Landrieu chose not to compromise. His was a unique example, because he refused to pay lip service to the Confederate South, nor did he try to legitimize the creed Lee represented. To do either in this case would have meant abandoning moral wisdom for the sake of momentary political expediency. In this moment taking no side would have meant taking the wrong side, because indifference towards moral atrocity can be just as harmful as its endorsement. Landrieu knew his side and refused to back down. To quote Bruni once more, Landrieu stated, “in the least hysterical, most persuasive manner possible what’s right and what’s wrong.”


But what made this the appropriate moment for such a response? It is difficult to say. It is certainly a matter of interpretation which issues in American politics demand this non-compromising approach. According to some, abortion or gun rights might be just as significant, just as morally clear, as Confederate symbolism. But I think we can see the right in Landrieu’s choice if we consider his role as a politician, as a representative of everyone in New Orleans. Because leaving the statue up meant preserving a public celebration of a man whose self-professed definition of citizen and human categorically excluded some of those who Landrieu was elected to serve. The political practitioner must balance private beliefs against the collective sense of belonging, making sure the former never undermines the latter. Perhaps other moral issues involve conflicts of opinion on what the state can or should endorse. But few directly involve public disavowal of a person’s right to exist and thrive in this way. Perceiving this difference should help guide when to compromise.


Going one step further, we might apply Aristotelian thinking to this case. Landrieu knew that the South generally tended towards the vices of racism and communal moral bankruptcy; so his mean, his proper political response, required an avowed movement towards the preservation of representative civic spaces. Anything less would have meant failing the telos not just of his activity but of his city. Being sensitive to his public’s moral history and moral tendencies served the mayor well. He should be emulated in this regard.


Landrieu’s excellent statesmanship was not only due to his use of narrative, or insistence in choice, but in how he balanced the two. Uncompromising came with patient explanation. He recognized that his decision mattered, but how he put his decision into words mattered more. It is no accident, I suspect, that this prompt proposes narrative and compromise in the same space. Returning to Aristotle, compromise represents a statesman’s capacity for action, significant because “virtue or excellence is a characteristic involving choice” (Aristotle 1962, 43). Narrative, meanwhile, is the touchstone for motivation; without imbuing choices with particular and occasionally overlapping narratives, a statesman has no way to demonstrate that their actions are done for the right reasons. We need evidence of narrative from our politicians because we need to observe the virtue, however defined, that constitutes their choices; we need to see the target they attempt to hit. In seamlessly weaving choice and narrative, Landrieu does the right thing for the right reason. Because of this, I see him as a model not just for political practitioners, but for all citizens of the political process. In this speech, we see how a considerate mentor can cultivate civic excellence not just in one person but in the community as a whole.


In the months after May 2017 many eagerly whispered that Landrieu would be the Democrats’ best hope in 2020. It didn’t work out that way. But a little-known politician generating such national optimism is evidence that practically wise leaders might yet have their place in US government.









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